PJ Lifestyle » John Hawkinshttp://pjmedia.com/lifestyle
Because there's more to life than arguing about politicsSun, 02 Aug 2015 09:49:48 +0000en-UShourly1http://wordpress.org/?v=3.8.1How to Sabotage Your Life in 5 Easy Stepshttp://pjmedia.com/lifestyle/2015/03/20/how-to-sabotage-your-life-in-5-easy-steps/
http://pjmedia.com/lifestyle/2015/03/20/how-to-sabotage-your-life-in-5-easy-steps/#commentsFri, 20 Mar 2015 18:00:51 +0000http://pjmedia.com/lifestyle/?p=105745

Sabotaging your life isn’t quite as difficult as being a huge success, but it’s tougher than you’d think. After all, failure doesn’t just happen. For most people, it takes years of consistent hard work to make themselves into losers. But never fear: with the right attitude, you, too, can sabotage your life in 5 easy steps!

1. Think of yourself as a victim.

These days, it’s extremely easy to come up with some way that you’re supposedly being victimized. You can claim that the deck is stacked against you because you’re black, white, Hispanic, Indian (how dare you say “Redskins!”), female, male, gay, straight, short, fat (that’s “fat shaming!”), rich, poor – pretty much anything works. Ideally, you should get so into your victim identity that you start saying words like “mansplaining” and “trigger warning” without even a trace of irony so that you visibly annoy everyone around you with your hypersensitivity.

2. Wait for everyone else to fix your problems.

If you’re a victim, then naturally it makes sense for you to wait for some white knight to show up and fix all your problems. Maybe that “white knight” is your parents, the government or (God help the poor fellow) your husband, but someone should see to it that your life is running smoothly. Happily, since nobody cares about your problems as much as you, you won’t get much help and the aid you do get will seldom be to your liking. This leads to a deep sense of dissatisfaction with EVERYONE ELSE for not fixing YOUR problems.

3. Instead of doing, start complaining.

So what do you do if you’re unhappy? Do something about it? Come on, that might actually lead to a problem getting fixed. How are you going to sabotage your life like that? Instead of doing, start complaining! If your boyfriend treats you like garbage and cheats on you, just tell all your girlfriends about it. Endlessly. For months on end. In monotonous detail. Then when they ask why you won’t dump him – say, “but I love him,” and go back to complaining about how miserable he makes you.

Are you stuck in a job that pays the minimum wage? Don’t build up your skills so you can get paid more or look for another job; complain that it’s unfair and demand that the government change the law so that your boss has to pay you more than you’re worth. Have you been depressed for months or even years because something bad happened to you? Then get high, eat, drink yourself to sleep in the dark, do anything other than going to a psychologist or psychiatrist to get help.

You can apply this philosophy to just about anything, but the key to it is to spend hundreds of man hours over the course of a year moping and kvetching over something you could fix by making one tough decision.

4. Bend over backwards to blow any great opportunities that you do have.

If you somehow, someway do have some great opportunity fall in your lap, make sure to find a way to blow it. If you unexpectedly get that great new job, be sure to show up late, leave early and ask for days off two weeks after you start. If you land that beautiful woman who treats you like a prince, start asking yourself why she’d be interested in someone like you who’s obviously not in her league. Wave off that ride home and drive drunk, turn down the part-time job your relative found you, start sentences with, “It’s nice that you’re offering to do that for me, but….” Remember, if you’re trying to sabotage yourself, you can’t afford successes. You need to actively undercut yourself, sigh, and say, “Of course this happened to me because I always screw everything up!”

*Profanity warning for next video clip*

5. Make sure to top it all off with lots of negative self-talk

Be sure to habitually talk to yourself so harshly that a friend of yours would punch someone in the face for saying that to you in the street. “You’re ugly!” “You’re a piece of crap!” “Everyone hates you!” Lay it on thick and then to top it all off, insist that saying the cruelest things imaginable to yourself is “motivational.” Of course it is! That’s how speakers always start off motivational seminars — by telling people how worthless they are and telling them they’ll never succeed! Wait, no, it isn’t…on second thought, let’s not even mention self-help seminars. You start watching those on a regular basis and next thing you know, you’ll be focused on how to get your life back on track and who needs that, right?

]]>http://pjmedia.com/lifestyle/2015/03/20/how-to-sabotage-your-life-in-5-easy-steps/feed/5Science Confirms What We All Knew: Dogs Are Superior to Catshttp://pjmedia.com/lifestyle/2013/05/08/science-confirms-what-we-all-knew-dogs-are-superior-to-cats/
http://pjmedia.com/lifestyle/2013/05/08/science-confirms-what-we-all-knew-dogs-are-superior-to-cats/#commentsWed, 08 May 2013 15:37:14 +0000http://pjmedia.com/lifestyle/?p=40619

There’s a reason dogs are known as “Man’s Best Friend” while cats are primarily associated with batty spinsters. It’s CALLED SCIENCE.

There are many ways in which a dog can make you feel better. Scientists have conducted numerous studies that examine how you might benefit from having a four legged friend.

Some of the best-known research, run by Erika Friedmann at the University of Maryland, and outside colleagues, investigated the possible relationship between dog ownership and cardiovascular functioning. After carefully following the recovery rates of patients who had suffered a heart attack, Friedmann discovered that those who were dog owners, compared to those who were without a canine pal, were almost nine times more likely to be alive twelves months later. This remarkable result encouraged scientists to explore other possible benefits of canine companionship, resulting in studies showing that dog owners coped well with everyday stress, were relaxed about life, had high self-esteem, and were less likely to diagnosed with depression.

…Interestingly, the same cannot be said for cats. Some studies show that living with a cat may help alleviate negative moods, but is unlikely to make you feel especially good, and others suggest that cat owners may actually be more likely than others to die in the twelve months following a heart attack.

On the upside for cat fans, the failure of cats may be related to some sort of consistently horrible defect in the sort of people who prefer cats over dogs, as opposed to the general awfulness of cats as pets.

But, all kidding aside; this makes perfect sense. Dogs are loyal companions who are thrilled out of their minds every time you return home while cats are generally indifferent to your existence, but are willing to tolerate you as long as you are giving them food and they’re allowed to use you as a scratching post.

]]>http://pjmedia.com/lifestyle/2013/05/08/science-confirms-what-we-all-knew-dogs-are-superior-to-cats/feed/16Both Liberals And Conservatives Should Be Able To ‘Just Say No’ To Debtors Prisonshttp://pjmedia.com/lifestyle/2013/05/07/both-liberals-and-conservatives-should-be-able-to-just-say-no-to-debtors-prisons/
http://pjmedia.com/lifestyle/2013/05/07/both-liberals-and-conservatives-should-be-able-to-just-say-no-to-debtors-prisons/#commentsTue, 07 May 2013 18:00:54 +0000http://pjmedia.com/lifestyle/?p=40492

Very seldom do liberals and conservatives agree on much of anything these days, but there is one area where we should have some common cause. Over at the liberal website Alternet, Bill Berkowitz has written a piece called, “Cruel Country: Debtors Prisons Are Punishing the Poor Across America”:

In the 1990s, Jack [Dawley's] drug and alcohol addictions led to convictions for domestic violence and driving under the influence, resulting in nearly $1,500 in fines and costs in the Norwalk Municipal Court. Jack was also behind on his child support, which led to an out-of-state jail sentence.” After serving three and a half years in Wisconsin, Dawley, now sober for 14 years, is still trying to catch up with the fines he owes, and it has “continue[d] to wreak havoc on his life.”

…The jailing of people unable to pay fines and court costs is no longer a relic of the 19th century American judicial system. Debtors’ prisons are alive and well in one-third of the states in this country.

In 2011, Think Progress’ Marie Diamond wrote: “Federal imprisonment for unpaid debt has been illegal in the U.S. since 1833. It’s a practice people associate more with the age of Dickens than modern-day America. But as more Americans struggle to pay their bills in the wake of the recession, collection agencies are using harsher methods to get their money, ushering in the return of debtor’s prisons.”

…This year’s ACLU report….points out that many poor “Ohioans … convicted of a criminal or traffic offense and sentenced to pay a fine an affluent defendant may simply pay … and go on with his or her life [find the fine] unaffordable [launching] the beginning of a protracted process that may involve contempt charges, mounting fees, arrest warrants, and even jail time. The stark reality is that, in 2013, Ohioans are being repeatedly jailed simply for being too poor to pay fines.”

According to the report, Ohio courts in Huron, Cuyahoga, and Erie counties “are among the worst offenders. In the second half of 2012, over 20% of all bookings in the Huron County Jail were related to failure to pay fines.

…CBS Money Watch’s Alain Sherter recently reported that “Roughly a third of U.S. states today jail people for not paying off their debts, from court-related fines and fees to credit card and car loans, according to the American Civil Liberties Union. Such practices contravene a 1983 United States Supreme Court ruling that they violate the Constitutions’ Equal Protection Clause.”

Wreaking havoc on ordinary peoples’ lives

Jack Dawley: “You’d go do your ten days, and they’d set you up a court date and give you another 90 days to pay or go back to jail… It was hard for me to obtain work, so I fell back into the cycle of going to jail every three months.”

Paying money to people you owe can’t just be an “optional” thing. The government must be allowed to force people to pay their debts or our entire system of commerce would break down. That being said, it’s immoral, unconstitutional and even counter-productive to put someone in jail for being truly unable to pay his debts. How are you going to earn enough to pay what you owe if you’re in jail?

]]>http://pjmedia.com/lifestyle/2013/05/07/both-liberals-and-conservatives-should-be-able-to-just-say-no-to-debtors-prisons/feed/4The 10 Life Improvement Quotes So Essential I Have Them on My Wallhttp://pjmedia.com/lifestyle/2013/05/06/the-10-life-improvement-quotes-so-essential-i-have-them-on-my-wall/
http://pjmedia.com/lifestyle/2013/05/06/the-10-life-improvement-quotes-so-essential-i-have-them-on-my-wall/#commentsMon, 06 May 2013 23:00:54 +0000http://pjmedia.com/lifestyle/?p=40344

Because we’re constantly being hit with other people’s slogans. Advertising jingles, billboards, songs, TV shows, comments from friends, orders from the boss — all of those are being inputted into our subconscious each day.

Well, it’s important for us to control some of the information that goes into our brain as well. Here are the slogans I find so essential that I want to be exposed to them daily.

1) On attitude: “When a lion wants to go somewhere, he doesn’t worry about how many hyenas are in the way.”

2) A standard: “If every day was like today, would it be enough to achieve my goals for 2013?”

3) On dedication:

“7 months straight. No stopping, no maintenance weeks, no cheat meals. Why? Because if someone beat me, I didn’t want to look back at any cheat meals and ask ‘what if.’ I did what it took every single day, and THAT is why I looked the way I did. You either want it or you don’t. Just so you know, there wasn’t a day that went by in the last 8-10 weeks of that prep where I didn’t want just ONE extra yogurt, or 5 less intervals of cardio. But, I was not going to be outworked! I was NOT going to be denied! And you know what? It was all worth it.” – Tommy Jefferson

My good friend John Hawkins has decided to take a few weeks off from his weekly PJ Lifestyle article. So now seemed like the appropriate time to finally do what I’d been meaning to for some time: begin compiling together collections of some of his best articles. For almost two years now John has tackled all kinds of issues — from self improvement to popular culture to male-female relationships. He’s established himself as the section’s most popular writer and I’ve enjoyed watching him explore and experiment. When John comes back we’ve decided to brainstorm a new direction for him to focus on developing. I’m not sure yet what it should be — though I don’t doubt that John and I could probably come up with something within 15 minutes of brainstorming. The problem is that there are simply too many ideas where John could succeed! As this collection of his 5 most-heavily trafficked articles of 2012 shows he has developed himself into a versatile, witty writer who can craft engaging pieces across a number of subjects. Please leave your suggestions in the comments for the particular direction you’d most like to see John develop his writing in the future.

This is the first of a series of what will become an ongoing collection of The Best of PJ Lifestyle. I have plans for several more John Hawkins’s Greatest Hits Collections featuring compilations of his commentaries on Self Improvement, Movies, Entrepreneurship, Humor, Internet Culture, and other subjects. I hope that these collections can showcase the work of a talented writer I’m proud to work with who I’m excited to see continue to grow into one of his generation’s most distinct and consequential voices. In the coming months I will release similar compilations celebrating the work of other regular PJ Lifestyle contributors who have made editing this publication such a perpetual joy. It’s time to take a retrospective look back at the fantastic work of such frequent PJ Lifestyle contributors as Kathy Shaidle, Walter Hudson, Paula Bolyard, Charlie Martin, Jeanette Pryor, Theodore Dalrymple, Robert Spencer, P. David Hornik, Andrew Klavan, and Bob Owens. (And that’s just the beginning!) And as I publish these compilations now is the time to express your views on the directions you’d most like to see these writers take in the future. The ship has its crew; it’s time to set sail. Now we just need to chart our destinations.

If Chuck Norris gets a pedicure so that his toes will feel more comfortable when he kicks people in the face, will you think he is a wimp? No. If R. Lee Ermey wants to drink a Cosmopolitan because he feels that it will keep his throat perfectly primed to yell at people, he can get away with it. If UFC light heavyweight champion Jon “Bones” Jones likes to unwind by watching Twilight after choking someone unconscious in a cage fight, who are we to argue?

Still, there are some things that even the manliest of masculine manly men can’t get away with on their most masculinely manly days without having their man card permanently pulled. For example:

Wolverine

1) Geeking out on children’s entertainment

It’s one thing for a man to listen to the awful music of Justin Bieber and think, “Wow, that’s not the worst thing I’ve ever heard.” It’s quite another to actually go to one of his concerts for the fun of it or, worse yet, refer to himself as a “Belieber.” Wanna go to a comic-book convention? Ok, but if you’re a dude who dresses up like Thor and starts speculating about whether you can defeat the Hulk in a fight, you have a “man problem” you need to address. Don’t even get me started on being a damn brony and walking around in public talking about My Little Pony. Are you a five-year-old girl? If the answer to that question is “no,” then you don’t have any business being a fan of a show aimed at five-year-old girls.

Action movies are just as American as motherhood, apple pie, and capitalism. Movies like Unforgiven,Gladiator,Rooster Cogburn, Conan,Dirty Harry, Die Hard,The Dark Knight,High Noon,Man on Fire, Red Dawn, Tombstone, and True Grit speak to men in a primal language that transcends the story line on the screen. Men like these films because they capture qualities we’d like to think we have ourselves. We like the idea of being billionaire playboy Bruce Wayne and fighting crime in our spare time, pointing a gun at a punk and asking him if he feels lucky, or responding to the question, “What is best in life?” with “To crush your enemies, to see them driven before you, and to hear the lamentations of their women!“ While there are dozens of deserving action movies, there are seven that are particularly good at revealing parts of the male psyche.

John Rambo is a damaged character. His fighting in Vietnam left him with mental problems, made him ill-equipped to fit into society, and led to him ultimately having a difficult and lonely existence. However, there are two things about him that make the character click with men. The first is this:

Teasle: Are you telling me that 200 men against your boy is a no-win situation for us?Trautman: You send that many, don’t forget one thing.Teasle: What?Trautman: A good supply of body bags.

Rambo doesn’t pick the fight, but when he is backed up against a wall, he is a one-man army. This theme is repeated over and over in action movies because it’s something men aspire to all the way down in their souls.

The other, more subtle thing that makes Rambo appealing is that he shares a grievance that most men have on some level or another: his sacrifices are largely unappreciated. He went through hell to do what had to be done, paid a terrible price for it, saw his suffering shrugged off by men unfit to say his name, and was left holding the bag. There are millions of men who feel the exact same way. They’ve provided, they’ve struggled, they’ve done things they didn’t want to do for other people, and, ultimately, they found that it wasn’t valued. That makes it easy to relate to a character like Rambo, even if you’re not planning to shoot at anybody with a machine gun.

It would be hard to argue that, one hundred years ago when women couldn’t vote or hold the same careers as men, our society wasn’t tilted against the fairer sex. However, those days are long dead and gone, and women have largely achieved the sort of parity with men that the feminists of the sixties were demanding. In fact, we’ve gone beyond that point now and what we’re finding is that many women want to have it both ways. They want to be thought of as just as strong, tough, and capable as men while simultaneously demanding all sorts of special protection. In fact, it’s considered bad form to even suggest that men aren’t privileged and that, yes, in some cases, women are the ones who have an advantage because of their gender. We’re not even supposed to ask the most basic questions about the terrible trials women supposedly face because of their sex.

For example, it’s fine to complain that women earn 76 cents for every dollar that men earn, but any reasonable person should agree that’s not sufficient to show that there’s a problem. To prove there’s a real imbalance, you need to ask tough questions. Are women working the same long hours that men do week in and week out? Why should the woman who only works 40 hours so she can have a “balanced” life make as much as the man putting in 60 hour weeks to get ahead? Along similar lines, if a woman takes three months off to be with her child after she has a baby, while a man whose wife has a child just takes a weekend, isn’t he more dedicated to his job and thus more worthy of a promotion? What about a female secretary and a male coal miner with the same skill level? Even if their education and level of ability are the same, shouldn’t the one doing the dirty, dangerous, unpleasant job make more money? Moreover, from a common-sense perspective, if you could actually get by with paying women 76 cents on the dollar to do the same work that men do, wouldn’t all-female firms dominate every field because of the reduced overhead? You don’t hear people who complain about women making less discuss relevant questions like these because when you compare apples to apples, that pay gap disappears. That’s why on average you find that a never-married, college-educated woman actually makes more than a never-married, college-educated man.

]]>http://pjmedia.com/lifestyle/2013/03/06/is-american-life-really-slanted-in-favor-of-women-over-men/feed/41How Modern Life Transforms Men into Wussieshttp://pjmedia.com/lifestyle/2013/02/27/how-modern-life-transforms-men-into-wussies/
http://pjmedia.com/lifestyle/2013/02/27/how-modern-life-transforms-men-into-wussies/#commentsWed, 27 Feb 2013 15:00:07 +0000http://pjmedia.com/lifestyle/?p=35124

Most people think Marv is crazy, but I don’t believe that. I’m no shrink and I’m not saying I’ve got Marv all figured out or anything, but “crazy” just doesn’t explain him. Not to me. Sometimes I think he’s retarded, a big, brutal kid who never learned the ground rules about how people are supposed to act around each other. But that doesn’t have the right ring to it either. No, it’s more like there’s nothing wrong with Marv, nothing at all — except that he had the rotten luck of being born at the wrong time in history. He’d have been okay if he’d been born a couple of thousand years ago. He’d be right at home on some ancient battlefield, swinging an ax into somebody’s face. Or in a Roman Arena, taking a sword to other gladiators like him. They’d have tossed him girls like Nancy, back then. — Sin City

Manly Activity

Ever watched a classic action flick? Of course you have. Movies like Die Hard, Raiders of the Lost Ark, Lethal Weapon, First Blood, and 300 have become fixtures in the American psyche. All these movies feature either a lone man or a small group fighting in a desperate, violent struggle and yet, somehow, coming out on top. Throughout most of America’s history, the average man could more easily relate to the experiences in those movies the way someone who shoots hoops at the park could relate to watching an NBA game. Sure, they might not have been able to do what they were seeing on the screen, but they were well-acquainted with violence. Either they had inflicted it, suffered it, or seen it up close and personal. We’re a nation that was birthed in a bloody revolution, where feuds and dueling were frequent occurrences, where intermittent battles with Indians occurred until the twenties, where roughly twenty percent of the male population served in WWII, and where fist fights and brawling were relatively common.

Today?

The average man may have seen hundreds of thousands of murders on his TV screen and committed tens of thousands more playing video games, but he has also probably never struck another human being in anger in his entire adult lifetime. In other words, he may be captivated by the imagery he sees at the movies, but he goes home knowing that he will never even live out a pale imitation of what he’s just seen.

Are cats really the Honey Boo Boo of the animal world? No, Honey Boo Boo is the Honey Boo Boo of the animal world, while cats are more like the Lindsay Lohan of the animal world — difficult, unpredictable, hard to like, and probably high on catnip. Oh, cats look cute when they’re in the bobblehead kitten stage or swatting away at yarn, but as you get to know the little beasts, you start to realize that they’re merely trying to lull you into complacency so they can steal your breath after you fall asleep. An old wives’ tale? Well, is it just an old wives’ tale that if a cop beats a hippy with his nightstick then he’ll have good luck for seven years? I think not. On the other hand, dogs are superior to cats in every way and if you don’t agree, well then, good luck with your empty life without a soul.

1) Dogs are much smarter than cats.

Can you teach a cat to sit? To roll over? To come when it’s called? No, because cats are stupid. Granted, dogs are stupid, too, but they’re probably on the same level as your two year old. A cat is closer in intelligence to a geranium — if a geranium had claws and a certain feral cunning it could use to track, torment, and kill smaller plants for its own amusement. Is that what you’d want for a plant you loved? To be at the mercy of a hateful geranium? You cat people are just sick! Sick!